Richard Milhous Nixon

Jean-Claude Dessart/Reuters

Richard M. Nixon 1913-1994

Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, was the only President in more than two centuries of American history to resign from office. He was driven from office by the Watergate scandal, resigning in the face of certain impeachment on August 9, 1974. He often acknowledged that the event would inevitably stain his pages in history.

Yet Mr. Nixon, one of the half dozen pivotal figures of American politics in the quarter century that followed World War II, wrought foreign policy accomplishments of historic proportions. He reopened American relations with China in 1972. And he began the rapprochement with the Soviet Union with the signing of the first treaty limiting the potentially deadly nuclear arms race.

Paying tribute to Richard M. Nixon on the day after his death at the age of 81, American and world leaders today emphasized the 37th President's epochal achievements in reconciling the United States with Communist powers, rather than the ignominy of his resignation from office.

In a public career that lasted for nearly 50 years after he first won election to Congress in 1946, Richard Nixon had seemed indomitable (or, to the many who did not love him, relentless), returning again and again to prominence after defeats and a disgrace that would have finished other politicians.

Some say Ronald Reagan ended the cold war, spending the Russians to death in the arms race. Others say Mikhail Gorbachev ended it, with reforms that failed, but not before revealing the failure of the Soviet system. But if one person must be chosen for contributing most to the end of Soviet-American conflicts, my candidate is Richard Nixon.

After a dozen years of contention, including three lawsuits to block the release, the National Archives today made public the first 1.5 million pages of 40 million pages of White House documents from the Nixon Presidency.

When Richard M. Nixon resigned as President on Aug. 9, 1974, he left the White House physically ill, emotionally drained, publicly reviled and facing the probability of both criminal prosecution in the Watergate scandals and personal bankruptcy. A decade later he has emerged at 71 years of age as an elder statesman, commentator on foreign and domestic affairs, adviser to world leaders, a multimillionaire and a successful author and lecturer honored by audiences at home and abroad.